One can understand the hesitancy of the hard-pressed business executive amidst all the hype around the cloud to entrust their often critically sensitive information to a third party. And via the largely unfettered Internet at that.

Nowadays this usually means involving a data centre, situated around the corner but sometimes hundreds of miles away from the office or on a different continent.

In such circumstances, just how secure can an organisations closely guarded intellectual property (IP) be? It is a fast moving environment, made all the more potentially haphazard with the relatively recent onset of staff wanting to use their own phones and tablets at work. A phenomenom labelled by the tech industry as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), there is growing concern over employees accessing and storing company data using the same device they use as a consumer on public Wi-Fi.

HP estimates upwards of 60 per cent of organisations and enterprises remain unsure of the devices connecting to their network. Such uncertainty has to be balanced with the pressures on a business to find ways to reduce overheads, become more agile and gain that vital competitive edge in these still uncertain economic times.

Cloud computing has become the generic term coined to describe this virtual world, where an organisation can migrate online their growing IT data storage problems with the promise of money saved as a consequence. Rather than storing software and data on desktop machines the cloud enables users to access their programs and files from anywhere in the world on the net.

It has become big business. A report from 451 Market Monitor cites the cloud sectors annual growth rate at 24 per cent, running into tens of billions of dollars. Yet confusion abounds over whats the best cloud route to navigate an organistion through.

The good news is increasing numbers of commercial concerns are looking to a managed service data centre hosting solution to ease costs and hopefully boost the bottom line. Its all about transferring their computing and storage capacity to be serviced along with numerous others in a data centre, with an assurance that vital information will be securely locked away and only accessible by the client.

A new report from Pulsant, the Edinburgh and Reading-based cloud hosting provider and an HP CloudAgile Partner with eight data centres in five locations across the UK, stresses the clouds role is dramatically changing. Especially when it comes to involving the small to medium-sized (SMEs) sector tomorrows enterprise FTSE 250, even FTSE 100 stars as they examine strategies to cope with their increased data footprint.

Pulsants chief executive, Mark Howling, says: The cloud is no longer seen as purely a capacity/cost balancing tool. Rather, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is fast emerging as the most flexible storage option for handling complex data applications that are essential to driving competitive advantage.

It is increasingly SMEs, not large corporates, that represent the vanguard behind IaaS. Other cloud-associated offerings include Software as a Service (SaaS), along with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) style technologies, the aforementioned BYOD and mobile cloud apps.

Howling believes such new web and mobile applications, complemented by a much richer digital presence and growing online sales, are accelerating demand for cloud storage. Private and public cloud is now a major strategy for any CIO aiming to deliver high quality services to internal audiences and customers, over a variety of channels while operating efficient data flows.

Some of Pulsants customers are reporting as much as a 40 per cent reduction in storage operational running costs, as theyre also comforted by the knowledge that their data remains within these UK shores. So no problems with sovereignty issues.

Graeme Bryce, founder and chief technology officer of Edinburgh-based Factonomy, a business continuity management (BCM) software solutions specialist, says they opted for a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution. Our strategy demanded a scalable IT platform that would accommodate rapid business and operational growth and provide secure access to content and applications for our staff wherever they were based.

Phil Hobgen, technical director at Doner, a London-based integrated advertising agency, reports: We were able to migrate our system to budget and in exact timescales and with absolutely no disruption to our clients.

Back to Howling: Its all about building reassurance and establishing trust vital if we are to see mass adoption of cloud hosting across SMEs.

Rather than pushing technology to the client, it is about interpreting their commercial needs and requirements that, in turn, influences his firms product development.

Pulsants view is borne out by a Microsoft-sponsored Harvard Business Review Analytic Services cloud survey of 1,500 business and technology leaders. Eighty five per cent plan to use cloud-based tools between 2011 and 2014 to make their business adapt and respond better to changes while reducing business costs. However, an SB Authority Market Sentiment survey cites the need for an ongoing education process as business owners require to learn more about the concept before they hop onto the cloud.

Here a cloud strategy must be supported with superior firewalling for security and rigorous intellectual property management systems. Engaging a proven supplier with certified processes, offering 24/7 support, is the best route.

The BYOD phenomenon has got IT professionals all hot and bothered over the company and public usage clash and security implications involved and how to ensure thorough controls when user-and-device authentication and application access are combined. Yet, it is possible to use BYOD to simplify and rationalise the way a firm procures devices for its workforce, with back-up licensing and maintenance support in place.

HP has addressed the BYOD phenomenon through a partnership with F5 to speed-up the deployment of cloud applications, managing contentious issues like security profiles and network and application access policy enforcement based on a particular device and user.

Speaking from Interop in Las Vegas, HPs senior vice-president and general manager (networking), Bethany Mayer, says it is part of enabling clients to virtualise and automate their entire cloud configuration process. From application to network to user, based on policy-driven management, enabling them to deploy applications to users in minutes, not weeks or months.

This compares with the ponderous manual route where deployment in a typical data centre takes months of device-by-device configuration, across several layers of network infrastructure processes both time-consuming and subject to mistakes.